31 Days
by emmadotlouise
Summary: A collection of stories featuring Sarralyn based around 30-31 prompts over the month of April. Sixth prompt: perhaps it’s because it’s not sad enough. Result? Sarralyn makes a discovery.
1. Don't Forget

**AN:** This is going to be a collection of stories focussed around a series of prompts; one prompt per day. Today's (yesterday's actually -cough-) prompt inspired me in a strange way... and the result is a truly twisted fic... in a very weird, weird way.

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**31 Days #1**

pink ribbon scars that never forget

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**Don't Forget**

_emclar_

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She was never, ever able to forget.

Shapeshifting was like breathing to her; essential, necessary and _powerful_. For as long as she could remember, she had been taking the shapes of the People, living among them, celebrating their births, mourning their deaths bitterly, but she had never forgotten what it was that had made her human: the ability to see the greater picture, the ability to love like only a human can, the ability to be _her_.

Her wild magic tied her to the People, her essence tied her to humanity and the many, many lessons given to her by her parents; never forget yourself, you are who you are, you are a two-legger who can take the shape of a four-legger... like the crows of the Copper Isles who can take the shape of two-leggers, despite being People of the Sky.

When the spirits had come, when the dead had crashed the barrier between the realms and flooded into the bodies of the living, turning their bodies, their once pink, living bodies, into grey copies of their former glory, her wild magic had protected her... her and her mother both. Sarralyn didn't know where her mother was; she'd fled as Sarralyn had fled and they'd lost track of each other. Every now and again, Sarralyn heard through the whispers of the forest that the People had sighted her mother, always searching for the husband that had been taken from her that fateful, fateful day.

Sarralyn rubbed the grey scars that ringed her upper arms, grey amongst the pink flesh; ribbons on a cane, linking up to a marionette. They'd tried to turn her into their own puppet, dangling her limbs on marionette strings, but failed as her wild magic had driven them from her body. With a vehement cry, they'd exploded out of her and crashed into fragments of an almost-dissipated barrier.

No, she mustn't forget.


	2. The Sky's Your Playground

**31 Days #2**

walking on higher ground

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**The Sky's Your Playground**

_emclar_

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Clouds feel soft on your feet as you dance among them before flapping your wings to straighten yourself up, careening through the skies at a neck-breaking speed. A slight change in the tilt of your wings and body and you send yourself spinning in a spiral, breaking through puffs of water with a giggle of glee and getting wet, wet, _wet_.

Then you feel your wings take the shape of human arms again as you know that your wild magic isn't quite up to the task of carrying you through a full day of flying and you think oh_ shit_ and flap your arms as hard as you can to try to fly to the heavens instead of hitting hell.

And then you realise that you're not walking on the higher ground anymore where birds fly free and the clouds are your playground.


	3. The Frog Princess

**31 Days**

is it a groove or is it a rut?

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**The Frog Princess**

_emclar_

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She'd seen a few cute boys in the capital, but they'd always been unnerved by the daughter of the realm's strongest mage and the Wildmage. The fact that she shape-shifted when she got excited didn't help the matter either. Her first kiss had been with one of Jasson's friends – a noble boy from Mindelan (who her friend Lianne had proceeded to tease her about endlessly)... but it hadn't gone quite as Sarralyn would have hoped it would. They had snuck away from Numair's prying eyes and Sarralyn had shielded them from being seen by the animals so that they wouldn't communicate the happenings to Daine.

He'd taken her by the hand and Sarralyn's heart had almost fallen out of her feet at his touch. It had been just like what she'd read in her nursemaid's romance novels. Her heart was fluttering like there were a thousand butterflies in her chest, just wanting to escape and fly into the sky. He'd gently pushed her up against one of the castle walls and she hardly cared that there were sticks tangling in her hair and dirt and mud on her dress as she wrapped one hand into his curly hair and half-hugged him to her as she brought her face closer to his. Half-smiling, he'd brushed a lock of curly hair away from her cheek and closed the gap between her lips and his.

His lips were so soft and he smelled so good and... and... and...

Ahh...

Sarralyn tightened her grip on him and started to kiss him back. She felt like she was on fire, pleasant sensations running from her toes to the tips of her hair. And... oh crap... she knew what this feeling did, but she didn't care and kept kissing him.

She felt the familiar sensation of her wild magic running through her, stretching from one limb to the next, extending to all the parts of her body. Her body started to change shape, her bones re-arranging, starting at the bottom of her body until she was finishing fully transforming. It took the boy she was kissing a full second to comprehend that she had changed and he wasn't kissing a girl any longer.

He was kissing a... _frog_. And so it was that he became the butt of many, many ugly jokes involving the "frog princess". He pulled back from kissing her froggy lips and shrieked.

Okay, so he was the shrieking froggy prince from now on.

He dropped Sarralyn onto the ground and scrambled out of the garden, dirt clods flying everywhere in his attempt to hurry away as fast as he could.

Sarralyn landed painfully on her side, her body and her ego both bruised. "Well, I never liked you anyway!" she shouted at his back.

And while it was half true, it was the betrayal of her own body that made her feel the worst. She just wanted to be like any other human, but she was a wildmage... and she had to learn to live with it. But what if she didn't want to learn to live with it? Would her mother or father bind her powers? Then... she'd remembered her father saying that wild magic could never be bound, because wild magic was found everywhere – in the trees, in the animals; in every single living thing, because wild magic was energy needed to live. If Sarralyn didn't have her wild magic, her body wouldn't survive. She'd always been a healthy child, mostly because her immune system had been bolstered up by her wild magic. It made her stronger and that made her will to make something of her life even stronger than that.

So while she wasn't necessarily in a rut, she wasn't in a groove either. It was one of those things that just _were._


	4. Grey World

**31 Days**

nothing ended, nothing begun, nothing resolved

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**Grey World**

_emclar_

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Her entire world is grey – everywhere she looks, she sees puppets dancing amongst the remains of the living, having torn others apart in their desire, their wish, their want, their _need_ for new human flesh, _pink_ human flesh. They smell her whenever she is in her human form, so she has no choice but to take the shapes of the People. Her scent changes as an animal; she takes on the pine, beech, evergreen scents of the forest, the clean-air smell of the skies, cool and fresh, and when she is of the water, she smells of nothing.

And right now, as she watches these _people_ inhabiting the bodies of her friends, she feels nothing. Nothing but remorse, sadness, loneliness, _regret_ that it is them in there and not her.

And she wants to help them, but she feels like she can do nothing, like she is _helpless_. And she is. Short of transferring her wild magic to every person – puppet – she comes across, there is nothing else to be done. She is doomed to wander the world, always searching for new people, for life yet untainted by death.

And when she comes across them, she feels her heart leap to the sky and play amongst the clouds along with her other wishes and prayers. The brightest star in the night sky feels to her like the pinnacle of her hope; where the gods are watching through a spyglass, distancing themselves from what has happened in her world. They have left their worshippers, chosen not to work through a human vessel as they often do in dire situations. She often weeps for them, for the people who have been erased from existence by those who have already passed, feels her tears hit the ground and land on one of the people, who sit by her trying to ease her sorrow. They know she is mourning and they know that the humans, _their_ humans, are not who they once were... and as they try to figure out what to do, she realises something.

There _is_ something she can do.

She can be the one who doesn't give up hope when everyone else has. She can be the one who actively works towards a resolution; something that will send these dead back to the Peaceful Realms where they belong so the living can keep on living and the death can sleep, slumber through the long, long days and dream of the long, long days they had when they, too, once danced under the sun and, in the night time, gazed up at the stars and dreamed.


	5. The Stars Do Slumber

**31 Days**

_emclar_

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**the stars do slumber**

we'll be closer than the stars

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The Peaceful Realms is full of slumbering spirits, those who have not broken through the barrier to a world of grey, a monochromatic world drained of all colour because of those who wanted what they had already had. Above each slumbering spirit, there twinkles a star, a star that varies in colour depending on how long the spirits have been there. For the older ones, there are red stars. For the newly sleeping spirits, they are as bright and white.

Everywhere she looks, all she sees is stars. She has come to the realms of the Black God to talk with him, to find out how she can return them to where they belong and how she can get her family, her friends and the rest of her world back to how it should be; colourful, full of life and _untainted_.

_They are in your world because their stars have vanished_, he tells her. _Someone has sent their wishes to that spirit one too many times._

_Wishing causes the spirits to awaken?_ she asks. _But why?_

_Lovers, dreamers, they want for something that is not theirs; they have dreams and hopes and by wishing on a star, they send these wishes and dreams to the stars that lay above the sleeping spirits. This makes them restless_. The Black God appears to be looking at her face, but she can feel him searching the depths of her soul for her hopes and her dreams.

And it makes her wonder how many of these spirits she caused to awaken because of the countless wishes she has sent to the sky, to the stars; the number of times she has laid in the grasses in the forest, staring up at the night sky. And she remembers, she remembers the last time she looks at the sky that it was starless, save for a few bright lights scattered through the heavens. They hung near the moon, sheltered by the Great Goddess, her favoured kept close by so they may feel her warmth for the rest of their days and nights.

_You must find your mother, Sarralyn,_ the Black God says to her, resting his veiled hand on her shoulder and hooking a finger under her chin to tilt her head up so she is staring into the shadows that are his face. _You and she must work together to bring the spirits back. There is little that we, as gods, can do once they move into the mortal realm. You must bring them back._

Sarralyn feels dread, sadness and an ache, like she is swallowing the sorrow of all the spirits who have been possessed, and a tear carves its way down her face. The Black God wipes it away with a dark, ghostly finger. _How am I supposed to do that?_ she asks him.

_Look inside your dreams,_ he replies. _Every answer you seek is there._


	6. Black and White

**31 Days**

perhaps it's because it's not sad enough

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**black and white**

_emclar_

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She'd never liked the feeling of things being ripped from her; feelings, especially. The idea of her heart being pulled in two had been even less appealing, yet Sarralyn had been hit with a double whammy the day that the spirits had broken the barrier. Thread only mended so many things.

Her days with the Black God had been some of the hardest. She'd drifted from spirit to spirit, each weighing more heavily on her chest as she willed, wanted, hoped and _wished_ she could take her dreams away from them so that they wouldn't be restless, so that they could continue to sleep forevermore.

_It does not matter what you do now, up here, Sarralyn,_ the Black God had said to her. _What matters is what you do down there._

Sarralyn had turned her gaze to the Black God momentarily before a flash of black and white caught her eye and she felt the rest of what had been holding her heart break. She ran through the Peaceful Realms, stumbling over sleeping spirits in her haste to get to the man-being shrouded in black and white.

_Is it him?_ she had asked the Black God, her voice on the verge of cracking.

_Yes,_ he'd replied. _That is your father._


	7. Tainted

**31 Days #7**

where were you when they broke the news?

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**Tainted**

_emclar_

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Living a tainted existence is barely living any kind of existence at all. When all you have to look forward to every day is the sun rising so the spirits within the bodies take shelter in the forests and in the shadows and the night becomes a kind of terror that threatens to rip your soul in two, your own existence becomes more of a burden than a blessing.

She feels herself inhaling the forest air, sunlight dancing off the dew resting on the leaves of the trees. The People had sheltered her that night, taking her into their homes as she shapeshifted into one of them. Her own kind had stomped through the forest, puppets to their puppeteers, looking for her, for that one tangible piece of life that they _lived_to consume.

The People have received word from their kin that her mother has been sighted, her wild magic touching each and every one of them, alerting them to her presence, and she feels her stomach fill with dread as she thinks about how she is going to tell her mother about her father.

But all she can think about is the questions that she is going to ask, _"Where were you, mother? Why did you desert me?"_ And... as tears fill her eyes... _"Why was I alone when I had to find out about Father?"_


	8. The Cat

**31 Days**

too much love will kill you in the end

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**The Cat**

_emclar_

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Everywhere she looks, there are signs – signs leading towards freedom, towards hope – and then there are the other signs that lead back to where she started from. Does she choose to go forward or to go back? She knows moving forward is the right answer, but she doesn't know if she wants to face the unknown. The unknown terrifies her as much as the thought of having to go back to the world she has come from.

She is dreaming. The Black God has told her that she will find her answers here, in her thoughts, feelings and the things she fabricates when the world goes dark and she slips into the realm of unconsciousness where everything feels real, but isn't... usually.

She feels her arms bending and breaking into flimsy bones – pain that should be there, like it usually is, isn't there and this reminds her again that she is dreaming – that form her wings and her face extending to take that of a large bird, one who can soar in the skies, surfing the currents in the air.

She tests the ground she is standing on and takes off into the blue, blue, cloudless sky and, for a split second, she forgets everything of her past and just enjoys it for what it is: carefree, uninhibited joy and freedom to enjoy the small things of the big, wide world.

She stretches out her entire body so she is gliding on the air, tumbling through torrents as she makes an obstacle course out of the sky, dodging a falcon here, an eagle there and she hears their voices as they call and sing to her, welcoming her to their home, where they fly free for their days.

There are grey clouds converging metres from her and the currents are pushing her towards them like metal to a magnet. She tries to angle her wings so she can drop out of the current, but it pushes her up and into the clouds. She is flooded with the grey that the rest of the people in her world have been affected by and it tries to claw its way into her body, her mind, but she fights it with every fibre in her being and bursts through the other side of the grey cloud.

In her mad haze, she notices her wings are a streaky blood-ridden brown instead of their normal russet.

And suddenly she is falling and the feathers are being ripped from her wings and pain is coursing through her. The tears that fall from her eyes caught by the wind turn to bloody rain that falls on her as she crashes to the ground and the wind is knocked from her. She involuntarily sucks in a breath and it feels like everything is on fire. She _is_ fire, smouldering embers of hope almost burned out... it almost feels like she has nothing more to live for, even though she _knows_ there are people out there depending on her... she is living _for_ them and they are waiting for her to give them the key to find the way to their own bodies again.

She feels a heavy weight padding along her body, starting from her legs until it stops on her chest. She opens her eyes to find a cat within her vision, staring intently at her with its purple eyes. In them, she can see the stars the cat has come from and the reflection of the Goddess.

When he speaks, she can hear the faint traces of a purr, of cats singing to the night sky in a salute to him, within his voice.

"Hello," he says, "my name is The Cat and I am here to help you." He delicately lifts a paw to his mouth and begins to clean it. "The next time you choose to careen through the skies at a breakneck speed and fall through a cloud of death, please avoid calling the attention of the Goddess. She tends to send me to people such as you and I would rather sleep." He tilts his head to the sky and sighs mournfully. "You almost died, you know. Well, until the Goddess took you in her hand and lay you down on the ground. Too much love, too much joy and not enough care taken, can kill you in the end if you're not careful."


End file.
